Janesville Education Association members took leadership roles over the weekend in the School District of Janesville’s Bags of Hope event, delivering groceries to needy families and individuals. The event provided approximately two weeks of groceries to 350 families and students who qualify for free lunch. The Janesville Education Association posted the photos below on its Facebook page.

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JANESVILLE, Wis. – The Dollar General warehouse in Janesville was busy with work on Saturday morning as hundreds of volunteers packed food as a part of the 10th annual Bags for Hope event. The event, put on by the School District of Janesville, delivers roughly two weeks of groceries to 350 families of students in the district who qualify for free lunch.

Ninety-eight percent of 2018 fall recertification elections for WEAC locals passed, according to results released by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. In all, 229 of 234 elections were successful.

The overwhelming support for local unions mirrors similar results in recertification elections since 2011.

“In the local associations holding recertification elections, educators show tremendous support for the union,” said WEAC President Ron Martin, a middle school teacher. “Unions play a very strong role in their local schools and partner to ensure the best for students.”

Recertification is a hoop created by the Legislature to limit employee rights. It requires that an association interested in being named the district “bargaining agent” pay for an annual election and the threshold for victory is half of the eligible voters voting yes, plus one. That’s a bar even the American president doesn’t have to reach to be elected. All educators, union members and non-members, vote in recertification elections and, if an educator does not vote, the state counts it as a vote in opposition.

Local associations across Wisconsin determine whether they will seek recertification based on their own unique circumstances. Whether or not a local chose to participate in recertification, and whatever the outcome of the vote, it’s important to stress that the union still exists. The union exists anywhere educators unite collectively to improve their schools for their students, expand their professional skills, and advocate for shared interests like school safety and opportunities for all children. No legislation can take away that right.

A great leader of the Wisconsin labor movement, Phil Neuenfeldt, has died. Neuenfeldt, president emeritus of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, died in his home November 4.

“Phil Neuenfeldt stood side-by-side with WEAC members during our most tumultuous struggles, always insisting that whether in the public or private sector, union brothers and sisters stand together,” said WEAC President Ron Martin. “As Phil would expect, those of us who mourn his passing will carry on to advance solidarity in Wisconsin.”

Martin urged WEAC members to re-commit themselves to getting out the vote in advance of Tuesday’s election.

“Phil was with us on the steps of the state Capitol back in 2011, and vowed never to give in to inequity and division,” Martin said. “Let’s do him proud by rolling up our sleeves in these final hours of the campaign to bring home a win for the working people of Wisconsin.”

Here is a brief clip of Neuenfeldt speaking on the steps of the State Capitol during the 2011 uprising (thanks to Citizen Action of Wisconsin):

River Falls educator Maggie Watson, a member of WEAC Region 1, displays one of the handwritten posters she created for each district staff workroom explaining the benefits of an active union. Maggie says a handwritten poster will always get teachers’ attention in a way that printed advertising won’t.

– Thanks to the Region 1 Connections newsletter for sharing this great photo

This spring, educators, joined by students, parents, and community members, donned crimson shirts and took to their state capitols with a message: Our students deserve better than tattered textbooks and leaky ceilings. Educators deserve better than bottom-of-the-barrel pay and having to pay out of pocket for basic classroom supplies.

The team at NEA Today took a look at how moments in several states across the country turned into a national movement we call #RedForEd, and how that movement will propel us to the ballot box and beyond.

The walkouts in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina were a siren call across the nation. And importantly, people are listening.

It is now up to each of us to help the #RedForEd movement continue. We must deliver pro-public education voters and candidates to the polls this fall. In the long term, we must protect the nation’s public schools and transform our unions.

At the September Kenosha Unified School Board meeting, educators respectfully shared their concerns with the district’s offer of a 1.25% cost of living increase. In a spontaneous and unplanned response to insensitive comments made by board member Gary Kunich at the meeting, educators walked out of the board room.

The KEA followed up with the Facebook video message below and this statement:

As people who dedicate their lives to shaping positive futures for our students, teachers deserve to be addressed with more respect than with veiled threats of layoffs or being told to research other districts if they are unhappy.

When you disrespect the Kenosha Education Association, you are disrespecting the dedicated teachers, education support professionals, social workers, counselors, librarians, and therapists of Kenosha who work to serve ALL of the educators and students of our public schools.

KUSD is asserting that, on average, teachers would receive a 3.18% increase. This average is being calculated by combining a 1.25% cost-of-living increase with level and tier movement on the salary schedule.

KEA continues to believe that all educators deserve a full 2.13% cost-of-living increase to keep up with inflation, in addition to movement on the salary schedule. The two are separate, not interchangeable, and both necessary to competitively compensate teachers employed by KUSD.

Cost-of-living increases are essential to maintaining the value of the salary schedule and ensuring that teachers are maintaining the same standard of living as everyone else. Level and tier increases are critical to reward and retain current teachers and to attracting new educators.

You can support the Kenosha Education Association by using the following link to send a message to KUSD board members and superintendent: http://bit.ly/KEArespect.

State Superintendent Tony Evers Monday congratulated eight Wisconsin elementary schools that received National Blue Ribbon School honors from the U.S. Department of Education.

“Congratulations to our 2018 Blue Ribbon Schools,” Evers said. “This national honor recognizes the efforts of students, staff, families, and the school community to work together to close gaps and make sure all kids achieve so our students graduate college and career ready.”

Nominated in January, the schools completed an application and underwent a national review process. Wisconsin’s 2018 Blue Ribbon Schools are:

Nationwide, 349 schools will be recognized at the November 7-8 awards program in Washington, D.C. Award winning schools are honored in one of two performance categories. Exemplary High Performance Schools are among each state’s highest performing schools as measured by state assessments or nationally normed tests. Exemplary Achievement Gap Closing Schools are among each state’s highest performing schools in closing achievement gaps between a schools’ subgroups and all students over the past five years.

Since its inception 36 years ago, the Blue Ribbon Schools Program has recognized 8,800 schools across all states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Department of Defense Education Activity, and the Bureau of Indian Education. The 49 private schools that will receive recognition this year were nominated for the program by the Council for American Private Education.

Wisconsin voters have made their priorities clear – they want quality public schools – but lawmakers are not listening. That is the analysis from the Wisconsin Budget Project of last month’s statewide poll by the Marquette University Law School. In the poll, voters said in many ways that they support quality public schools in the state. In response to one question, 61 percent said they prefer more money for public schools, while just 32% said they prefer tax cuts.

“One of the remarkable aspects of the poll results,” the analysis said, “is the degree to which they show that Wisconsin voters across the entire state place a high value on education. … Wisconsin residents believe that excellent public schools are important to the state’s success, and are concerned that recent changes have harmed public schools. Cutting taxes ranks relatively low among voter concerns, the poll showed.”

According to the Wisconsin Budget Project analysis:

“Voters all across the state place a great deal of value on Wisconsin’s schools, with nearly half (49%) naming K-12 education as among the two most important issues facing the state, according to the August 2018 poll from Marquette University Law School. In contrast, only 13% of voters identified tax cuts as among the most important issues.

“When presented with a direct trade-off between increasing resource for schools and cutting taxes, a significant majority of Wisconsin voters said they favor spending more money on schools (61%) than reducing property taxes (32%).”

The analysis continued: “One of the remarkable aspects of the poll results is the degree to which they show that Wisconsin voters across the entire state place a high value on education, and that concern about the quality of Wisconsin’s public schools is not limited to voters in more liberal-leaning areas of the state. In areas like Green Bay/Appleton and the suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee, both areas with high concentrations of conservative voters, respondents indicated that that education is a much more pressing issue than tax cuts, and express concerns that schools are worse off now than in the past.”

It concluded: “The reduced funding for public school districts didn’t occur because the state lacked resources. Wisconsin has enough state revenue to overturn the past budget cuts to schools, but lawmakers have chosen instead to use that revenue to pass billions in new tax cuts, many of which wind up in the pockets of the wealthy and well-connected.”

Read entire Wisconsin Budget Project analysis:

A new poll shows that Wisconsin residents believe that excellent public schools are important to the state’s success, and are concerned that recent changes have harmed public schools. Cutting taxes ranks relatively low among voter concerns, the poll showed. Voters all across the state place a great deal of value on Wisconsin’s schools, with nearly …

The teacher pay gap is growing, according to a new analysis, and teachers nationwide are now paid 18.7% less than people in comparable professions. That is an increase from 17% three years ago.

“The erosion of teacher pay relative to that of comparable workers in the last couple of years — and in fact since 2008 — reflects state policy decisions (mainly tax cuts) rather than the result of revenue challenges brought on by the Great Recession,” according to the analysis by the the Economic Policy Institute.

The EPI said the teacher wage penalty — how much less teachers make than comparable workers — grew from 5.5 percent in 1979 to a record 18.7 percent in 2017. The wage penalty was fairly stable from 1979 to the mid-1990s but then grew into the early 2000s. After some variability in the mid-2000s, the increasing teacher wage penalty continued to grow from 2010 through 2017, rising from 12.1 to 18.7 percent — driven by a particularly large increase in the wage penalty for female teachers.

The analysis noted that while teacher benefits are still generally higher than benefits in other professions, they are also declining and do not begin to make up for the loss in salary. The total teacher compensation penalty was a record-high 11.1 percent in 2017 (composed of an 18.7 percent wage penalty plus a 7.6 percent benefit advantage), it said.

The EPI offered two analyses. In the first, public school teacher wages were compared to wages of workers with comparable education, experience, and other characteristics, resulting in the 18.7% pay gap estimate. To break down comparisons by states, the analysis was more limited, comparing public school teachers with other college graduates by education level. In that second comparison, the national pay gap was 23.8%, and the pay gap for Wisconsin teachers was 22.2%.

“If the policy goal is to improve the quality of the entire teaching workforce, then raising the level of teacher compensation, including wages, is critical to recruiting and retaining higher-quality teachers,” the EPI analysis concludes. “Policies that solely focus on changing the composition of current compensation (e.g., merit or pay-for-performance schemes) without actually increasing compensation levels are unlikely to be effective. Simply put, improving overall teacher quality, preventing turnover, and strengthening teacher retention requires eliminating the teacher pay penalty.”

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Teacher strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Colorado have raised the profile of deteriorating teacher pay as a critical public policy issue. Teachers and parents are protesting cutbacks in education spending and a squeeze on teacher pay that persist well into the economic recovery from the Great Recession.

Read more in The Guardian:

American teachers are getting paid less – even though they are better qualified than ever, new research has found. Teacher salaries are down by nearly 5% compared with before the Great Recession – and it’s not because teachers are younger or less educated, according to the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Five organizations across the state are being named 2018 Friends of Education for their work on behalf of Wisconsin school children. State Superintendent Tony Evers will recognize the groups during his annual State of Education Address and Awards Program September 20 at the Capitol in Madison.

“These organizations are transforming young lives,” Evers said. “From strengthening school and business partnerships, to advocacy for teachers and public education, to volunteering and providing financial support, they are making a difference for students and schools in their communities.”

The awards ceremony follows the noon State of Education Address in the Capitol Rotunda on September 20. Wisconsin’s five 2018-19 Teachers of the Year will also be recognized. Additional information about each Friend of Education award recipient follows.

The Wisconsin Public Education Network is a loose, nonpartisan coalition of parents, community members, educators, board members, school districts, advocacy teams, and professional organizations united in the shared support and concern for the 860,000 children attending Wisconsin’s public schools. The organization’s advocacy is driven by a simple belief: that every single child in every single public school in Wisconsin deserves an equal shot at a successful future. WPEN’s grassroots efforts have members attending hearings, generating local action on education-related legislation, coordinating local-level days of action, and working with local teams to help pass school referenda. The relationship-based organizing model focuses on local-level action with statewide impact, providing thousands of Wisconsinites with the tools, credibility, and confidence needed to share their stories and concerns for public education. Accepting the award on behalf of the thousands of supporters connected under the WPEN umbrella will be Heather DuBois Bourenane, Marcia Engen, Chris Hambuch-Boyle, Jenni Hofschulte, and Melissa Prochaska.

For 23 years, the Boys & Girls Club of the Wausau Area has enriched and transformed thousands of young lives. The first club house opened in 1997 with approximately 500 members. Today, the organization serves over 2,500 youth at four sites with meaningful activities such as field trips throughout the Wausau area, the Teen Cuisine cooking class, reading programs, and athletic opportunities. Support for growth and activities is through the generosity of the local community and commitment of the club’s board and staff. Receiving the award on behalf of the Boys & Girls Club of the Wausau Area will be Kim Larsen, assistant executive director, and Casey Nye, board president.

Founded in 1969, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Alliance of Black School Educators Inc. (MMABSE) is a source of support for teachers and administrators committed to the education of African-American children. MMABSE and its members work with Milwaukee Public Schools’ Black and Latino Male Achievement Department to address disparities in the lives of black and Latino young men. MMABSE retirees volunteer in schools participating in the Dr. Seuss Read Across America event. Through its annual Bowl-A-Thon, MMABSE members raise funds to provide student scholarships. The organization convenes one of the largest teacher appreciation events in Wisconsin, recognizing outstanding teachers at its Annual Teacher Gala. Receiving the award for Metropolitan Milwaukee Alliance of Black School Educators will be Patricia Kline, member; Past President Rogers Onick; and current President Darrell Williams.

Rhinelander Partners in Education is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization focusing on strengthening the ties between local businesses and schools and providing learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom. Rhinelander Partners in Education exposes students to their community and potential careers through efforts like Careers on Wheels and Mad Money, as well as by providing guest speakers and job shadow opportunities. The organization works with local businesses, organizations, and public and private schools to make Rhinelander a better place for generations to come. Receiving the award for Rhinelander Partners in Education will be Board President Ben Meyer, Vice-President Teri Maney, and co-founder Leah Van Zile.

The Service League of Green Bay is made up of friends, activists, philanthropists, and dreamers bound by a single goal: to meet the physical, educational, and emotional needs of the children in Brown County by providing volunteerism and financial support. The Service League provides many needed resources for children and young people through child-focused efforts, such as Basics for Babies, Basic Necessities, and Teens for Independent Living. The Service League’s largest annual event is the Back-To-School store, which provides new clothes, sneakers, school supplies, and dental screenings to over 1,500 elementary school students. An additional 1,500 backpacks loaded with school supplies go to middle school children. At the Back-To-School Store, children are paired with a volunteer shopper and independently choose items they want to start their school year off right. Accepting the award on behalf of the Service League of Green Bay will be Board President Lauren Wooton and Immediate Past President Anna Burnette.